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Luo wrote:

EASTstroudsburg13 wrote:For New York, I don't know about "too much to overcome." For one, F-M and Gelinas have been pretty darn successful, and since teams can choose which events to do, can't the best teams simply choose to do the events they know are on a national scale?
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I don't believe this is that great of a problem in NY. The teams do very well anyway, and they usually have a significant amount of experience from invitationals in other states. Also, we as a scioly community already cite NY as one of the top states regularly, so NY's reputation as a strong state is not at risk here. It would be nice if they changed it to a more traditional style, I don't think it's as dire of a situation as you make it out to be.

Personally, I don't buy the "they do well enough already" argument. If it is possible that a change (such as adhering to the national tournament schedule) could allow New York teams to do even better than they do now, I believe that such a change should be made. While I agree with your point that New York teams' national success shows that states adhering to the national tournament schedule isn't necessary to do well, this doesn't change the fact that New York's unusual state schedule hamstrings its national-bound teams. I also don't believe that the availability of invitational tournaments in neighboring states is a valid excuse for using a bizarre state schedule; this effectively tips the scale further in favor of teams that have the financial means and coaching wherewithal to attend several of these tournaments in other states.

Again, though, I don't know how much of an impact it would make. NY's choice of events is unusual, but many states don't correlate the state schedule to the national schedule exactly, so that part of it will not become an issue until a top state starts doing it, which if this is the case please let me know. And as far as the invitationals go, teams that aren't shooting for nationals aren't worried about attending out-of-state invitationals so they can experience a national-type schedule. There are enough in-state tournaments for them that will prepare them for states to do as well as they can there. Remember, once you get past, say, the top 5 or so in most states, teams are just shooting to do as well as they can at states, and nationals is just a faint dream. I know this, I was part of a team that placed 6th at states. Also, Athens is practically in New York, so lots of NY teams have access to that.

I think the only way to determine what would be the outcome, at least for debatable states like NY, would be the change the schedule, and I don't feel like it would change enough to warrant something like a change of state directors. Maybe a massive petition, but even that seems like a bit much to me.

As far as Texas goes, our state tournament is a little bit crazy.

In short: 28 events are offered (the 23 national events and 5 Texas events) which then beforehand you select the 23 you would like to compete in (so you can drop your worst national events in order to compete in the generally less competitive Texas events). The other strange thing is that the competition takes place over 2 days with all of the engineering on the first and all academic on the second. This doesn't change much too much s far as scheduling besides making scheduling engineering events about a thousand times earlier.

Even then however, Texas does not follow the National Schedule as far as academic events, no idea why. So we do have a few places where we have to have our 3rd best person compete instead of our 1st which usually doesn't hurt us too much. I like to think that this actually aids in team longevity as more people have to continue studying for events through and through (now we have 3 state-caliber competitors in say, Chem Lab, instead of 2, though only 2 will compete nationally), or a more specific example is that I for some reason am doing ExD at state when I haven't competed in that event in 2 years (don't ask me why they chose me).

Going back to the whole Texas event thing though, I, being from LASA have a bit of a peeve with these events, as we had a close call against the 2nd place team at state because they had chosen to compete in all 5 of the texas events in order to avoid testing in their worst (Disease, WIDI and some others I believe). Though this is a choice that any team can make, LASA is always preparing for nationals and thus does not consider competing in these events a viable option. Competing in these Texas events likely hurts teams that continue on to nationals as they don't have to learn how to manage their tough events, and then bomb them when it comes to it.

In summary, states with state events are weird and not following the national schedule probably doesn't have much affect.

foreverphysics wrote:

fozendog wrote:I know New York sends two to nationals (almost) every year, but does Alabama send two?

Usually, yes. However, we don't know about this year yet--we're always close to borderline, and depending on team registration numbers...well.

EDIT: This only applies to Division B. Division C never sends 2 teams.

So, how many B teams did Alabama register this year?

I have no idea--we're waiting until the official registration numbers come out.

The National Tournament website was updated today with a LOAD of information!

Notably, Geologic Mapping and Green Generation will be trial events for Division C, and Green Generation and Invasive Species will be trial events for Division B. Additionally, photos of event rooms are posted here.

On the Plan Your Trip page, no information appears about dorms being available or unavailable for competitors to stay in. My assumption, based on the absence of information, is that no dorms will be available, but could one of the Chalkers please clarify that this is the case?

Luo wrote:The National Tournament website was updated today with a LOAD of information!

Notably, Geologic Mapping and Green Generation will be trial events for Division C, and Green Generation and Invasive Species will be trial events for Division B. Additionally, photos of event rooms are posted here.

On the Plan Your Trip page, no information appears about dorms being available or unavailable for competitors to stay in. My assumption, based on the absence of information, is that no dorms will be available, but could one of the Chalkers please clarify that this is the case?

I think there will be housing available. If you look on the coaches page in says "During the registration process, coaches will have the opportunity to submit their team's official roster and sign up for housing."

rfscoach wrote:I think there will be housing available. If you look on the coaches page in says "During the registration process, coaches will have the opportunity to submit their team's official roster and sign up for housing."

I see; thank you. Hopefully if this is the case, more information will be posted on the website soon.

Luo wrote: I see; thank you. Hopefully if this is the case, more information will be posted on the website soon.

It will be, hopefully within a week or so.
There will be about 1800 dorm rooms available, and like the site already says, coaches will be able to sign up during online registration.

Will the dorm rooms actually have WiFi?

fozendog wrote:Will the dorm rooms actually have WiFi?

WSU has really nice free WiFi campus wide, including in the Nutter Center arena. While I haven't been inside the actual dorms, I'm pretty confident that the WiFi reaches them too.